Quarterly Review — 25 Years of Revolutions, Hype Cycles, and Bubbles

Revolutionary intro

This is my first Quarterly Review. I am fortunate to say that the last 25 years have been both rewarding and, in some ways, transformative, though not without hard times. I believe a 25-year perspective is enough to see what has been significant and what has not.

Many, many great people have contributed along the way — ranging from seasoned veterans to passionate newcomers. Thank you all, it has been a pleasure to work with you. I hope I have said this often enough. Great people are the best thing at work.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked in various industries such as agriculture, consumer electronics, energy, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and telecom, but I have not seen any revolutions. Changes sure, maybe even couple of transformations, but revolutions? No.

Business language is unfortunately plagued by hyperbole. Revolutions and disruptions are seemingly lurking everywhere. The real world is much more stable, slower, but can be surprising at times. The thing that counts are the technologies we actually use, not the ones we hype. Yes, I mean you, .ppt and .xls! You seem to be diehards, but I hope AI will finally be your downfall!

Looking back, I think the world has changed relatively little during these years. We humans are creatures of habit, and the status quo is a mighty force. For example, 80% of our total energy consumption is still derived from fossil fuels. We run our businesses mostly on fossils. Unequality, biodiversity loss, and climate change continue to be massive problems. Little progress has been made on these fronts. But these are not the topics of this text. I just wanted to put things in some kind of perspective.

This reflection focuses on the key milestones I consider important for myself and the lessons learned as I remember them. I made the decision not to include the emergence of social media and the rise of the platform economy in this text. These are probably the most important new technologies and business models on a political and societal level during this period, but professionally they have not been something I have closely worked with. I might write a separate text on them later. For now, I recommend Cory Doctorow’s articles about entshittification on this topic.

Party like it’s 1999!

I started as a Quality Engineer at Satama Interactive sometime in August or September 1999. My job was to make sure that the nokia.com website was working properly. We did not have any fancy automatic test tools back then. The main part of my work was manually ensuring that links worked, images were in the right place, and so on. The dawn of the commercial internet was a really mundane experience for me. It was very much a “you have to work for a living” kind of thing.

The more interesting part was creating all sorts of concepts. The new media hype was at its peak, and we had an amazing time figuring out what could be done with the internet. Google’s search engine was fresh out of the oven in 1998 and possiblities seemed endless.

We were cracking jokes about how Y2K would end in a global meltdown. Nothing actually happened. Maybe it was because professional people were working on it. Thanks people.

Napster was mind blowingly awesome and, ah, so illegal. Streaming eventually was a transformative model, but only after a decade of fierce fighting over copyrights etc.

I also remember from these days some absolutely crazy concepts with massive funding but no viable business model, like e-commerce sites without proper logistics. No wonder the bubble burst, but the new media hype is still the best hype I have experienced so far. It was a wonderful cocktail of great people, fun, new frontiers, and hubris. And we had fantastic parties!

[Note: Spotify was lauched in 2006 and it too had to fight quite a bit with different things. This timeline is a great example how changes happen. From early technology and concept introduction to mainstream adoption is easily 10 years and the process is still ongoing. It seems at moment that the winners eventually are big incubent corporations.]

Failure on a stellar scale, but we learned a lot

I was in San Francisco in 2001, attending a seminar where I joined several sessions doing post-mortems on the bubble. The biggest lesson I remember was that the bubble was driven by a “tech-first” mentality, with little industry knowledge and inflated short-term financial expectations. What struck me most during the seminar was how casually people talked about what I considered failure on a stellar scale and I felt like being part of the biggest post-mortem ever. Yet, people in the seminar just took it as natural, focused on the learnings, and prepared for Version 2.0. The bubble burst was a foregone memory.

I think this was a double edged learning for me. On the other hand, I really was impressed by this attitude, fail and learn fast, but on the other hand I have never liked the tendency in business to forget failures and mistakes and “move forward” without proper reflection. Many people know kaizen, but few know hansei.

Version 2.0 of everything

For me, version 2.0 meant mobile internet. In hindsight this was pretty progressive stuff, but I did not realise it at the time. It was just quite interesting work. I worked on several projects developing mobile concepts based on WAP and 3G networks. I thought WAP was a doomed protocol, but the hype was so massive that companies were pouring money into all things WAP. History proved them wrong, but mobile internet proved to be transformative model, though only after five years or so.

We had never seen what an actual “3G device” would look like, but that didn’t stop us from creating great concepts in property sales, banking, and e-commerce for industrial spare parts. Ofcourse there were a lot failed projects, and some concept were ahead of their time.

We had also great fun and parties during this time. Unforgettable inside jokes like Joe W. Forehand: ”C’mon baby catch my cold” and The Fun Loving Monotremes Tony Clifton Cruise even ended into a professional media (Tietoviikko, no link, sorry. Too old stuff).

One of the oddities during this time was a project where we designed user interface for digital TV. I still cannot believe digital TV was seen as a viable competitor to the internet, but it was. Another great flop, but I think the UI concept was a success for our team. Most of the first digital-tv boxes (yes, you needed to buy that dust collecting monster) had lousier UIs than our proposal. Our UI concept was not selected for production anywhere, but I am still proud that our team put Conan the Barbarian as an example program selection in the demo.

“It will hurt at first, but eventually you will love it.”

After these rather high-flying projects, I landed in a global ERP project. This was a change without a clutch for me personally, but ERP in the early 2000s was a massive push for many companies, so there was work to be done. One of my more experienced colleagues welcomed me to the new world: “It will hurt at first, but eventually you will love it.”

ERP projects can be daunting. Lots of costly mistakes were made, such as building company-specific customizations that were hell to maintain and drained all IT budgets. We called them ZAPs. But the benefits of having a global ERP were massive, and there really was a solid business case to legitimize the big costs.

I am still not sure if I really love ERP, but I have learned a lot about data and people while doing these projects. Great people and top-notch data quality are key to success. I would still say that e.g. product life-cycle data is under utilized asset in many companies as typical focus for ERP projects tends to be getting basic processes up and running.

The data part I learned the hard way. We didn’t now how much software weights, so we just put jokingly 1000 kg, because nobody else didn’t know the right value. Soon, we got an angry call from logistics hub asking who has ordered 14 trucks for 250 CDs of software?! Believe me, data quality can matter a lot and please use value 0,001 kg for software, in case you still need this kind of distribution medium.

How the mighty fall

From the ERP projects, I moved on to product development in consumer electronics. This was not that big of a change as it might seem, because I had learned quite a bit about products, services and processes just by getting to know business process data about them quite deeply e.g. product requirements and product structures.

I worked for several years at the now-defunct Nokia Mobile as a product development consultant. Our program’s mission was to renew product development at Nokia. At one point I had the privilegy to fly around the world with what US Customs named ”Research and Development Scale Model”. Essentially it was aluminium suit case full of electronics running novel software. The idea was to concretely demonstarte new way of doing products and services.

Our mission failed miserably. We were a tiny part of what ultimately resulted in the complete collapse of a company that once held a 40% market share in the very lucrative mobile market. A company that produced 350 million mobile devices annually — that’s four devices per second, every second of the year. Very impressive.

I also worked with Nokia Networks and never could quite wrap my head around the fact that Nokia Mobile Phones never seriously considered Network’s software development experience. There was a lot to learn from the “other side” of the company. Network’s capability to manage complex systems was, and probably still is, the best on the planet, and the DX200 platform is probably the most underrated product in Finnish industrial history. It has billions of users, and hardly anyone knows what it is. It truly is a diamond.

During my years at Nokia, I saw many interesting things, met highly talented people, and I learned a lot — especially about corporate politics, intellectual arrogance, and how the mighty fall. The collapse of Nokia Mobile Phones is by far the biggest economic cluster-screw-up in Finnish history, and easily in the top 5 of global economic history. Maybe I’ll write my own take on it sometime. For now, it’s enough to say that it wasn’t just the iPhone’s touch UI that caused the collapse. That’s just the surface of the story — an important and well-known part, but a detail. For now, let’s just say the reasons for complete collapse were not engineering problems but management issues.

The grind of the ordinary is underappreciated

After the Nokia collapse, I worked in manufacturing companies, mostly on different types of data projects, specifically around product data and product life cycle management. This was the least hyped time of my career, but I worked with great people building great machines. The grind of the ordinary is underappreciated. I also got to work in projects related to data in our health care system. I won’t go into the details of this, but there are slow changes, and then there are healthcare slow changes. Ten years is a blink in this industry. I hope AI will accelerate and transform our healthcare systems for the better.

Cloud hype was emerging and that was a transformative change in infrastructure. Oh, and there was an API hype. Everybody was building APIs with their heads sweating. While I understand the importance of APIs, they still do not solve data quality problems and can lead to API hell.

As a sidekick, I also ended up being a team member at RePack. During long but interesting years, we learned how damn difficult it is to try to change the status quo and compete with big corporations with well-oiled machines and deep pockets. The circular economy has been a long-term and very disappointing hype. Still, I hope the linear take-make-waste business model will finally fall, and we actually get circular business models working at scale. RePack continues its mission to end trash. It is now in a better position to do so after the exit in 2024.

Rabbit hole of wonders and dark sides

Then, around 2015, I became interested in agriculture and technology. I realized that climate change would have very serious impacts on our food systems. When one of my friends asked me to present at an event about data and agriculture, I fell into a rabbit hole of wonders and the dark sides of agriculture.

I ended up in a research-to-business project at Aalto University, a year of wild experimentations and search for niche. Synthetic data, game engines, mobile phone as imaging system, hardware design, lots of algorithms and hard work on hot fields. We even had our own barley trial field in the basement of Aalto Computer Science basement. I think this has been the most innovative time in my life. I am co-inventor in three patents, but what I enjoyed the most were those moments when you feel like you are doing science fiction stuff for living and for good purpose. In 2018 we founded an AI start-up, Yield Systems, focusing on plant breeding and agriculture.

It has been a rough ride. First, COVID. My co-founder was on the rice fields in Philippines with poisonous snakes when all crashed. Luckily he managed to escape from the island before complete six month lock down.

We managed to secure 600 k€ private investment and some grants, totaling 1 M€, and it looked pretty good. Then Russia started cruel war on Ukraine, that had an impact to us as entrepreneurs as well. Funding markets basically drained in matter of weeks.

Yield Systems is still alive and kicking, with improving prospects in sight. I hope we solve the funding issues and get to deliver our technologies to our customers at scale.

Next 25 years in my life will be radically different

However, due to family reasons, I needed to find a more secure place to work, and to my great joy, one of my long-time friends hinted that Gofore might have an AI Advisory position open. And here I am, writing this after six months of working on AI projects with splendid colleagues. Thank you all who trusted me in this. I can also wholeheartedly relate to our mission: “Pioneering the ethical digital world.”

After six years in start-up and back in consulting business I can make some observations. The fundamentals of work are still the same: understanding customer needs, problem definition and solving skills, clear communication, and teamwork will take you far. Ask for help and people will help.

If there is any advice I can give, it is this: Take it easy and be kind to others. Having fun at work is also important. Read a lot. Be curious. Fail and learn.

The latest hype is obviously AI. I think this hype is different in the long term. It might truly be revolutionary. I haven’t seen a technology before that enables us to harness data at this scale and that has the ability to learn. Internet protocols, WAPs, ZAPs, ZIPs, or mobile devices do not learn. AI does, and that is the huge difference.

Generative AI with conversational UI has democratised access to latest and greatest models. I hope we will see open AI, with lot of competition and innovative companies and individuals challenging linear and unsustainable take-make-waste status quo and we can empirically reach the sustainable limits of the planet and provide decent living for all of us. It does not look good, but I am an possibilist. I believe it is possible succeed in this gargantuan task, but only if we are wise and act accoringly.

I believe the next 25 years in my life will be radically different. How exactly, I do not know, but I think it is already safe to say that AI will be a central topic in my second Quarterly Review, which will be published in 2049. So stay tuned! Looking forward to working with you all. And maybe sometimes, even if I am not a nostaligic person, party like it’s 1999!

P.S. Requirements for data quality are more demanding than ever. Only quality data will result in quality AI applications.

P.P.S. Text is mostly by me. ChatGPT 4o did most of the proof reading. Mistakes are mine. Image by Midjourney.